E3 2005: Heaven versus Hell

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Executive producer James Parker on the celestial RTS.

By Steve Butts

God has been at war with the Devil for a long, long time now. And it's about damn time that this constant conflict was the subject of an RTS. Enter TKO. At E3 this year they're showing off a new RTS based on this celestial conflict. We managed to get executive producer James Parker to answer a few questions and give us a few screenshots before the show.

IGNPC: The basic concept of a war between Heaven and Hell is pretty compelling. What specific form does this idea take in Heaven vs. Hell? What's the fight about exactly and what's the scale and nature of the fighting?

James Parker: Heaven versus Hell takes the eternal concept of Heaven Versus Hell and expands upon it by allowing players to control the minion's of Hell versus the might of Heaven. This takes form in a grand scale war with hundreds of units battling against each other in a real time 3D environment. The sheer scope and feel of the game is a lot larger than anything else done in this genre before.

IGNPC: What is the Fight about in Heaven versus Hell?

James Parker: Basically the grand design that God has set in motion is not really going the way he thought it would a few millennia ago. The end result is God cracking the seal and releasing the 4 horsemen. The only catch is God is going to bring everyone to Heaven when the dust settles and remove the universe from existence and start again. Hell doesn't really like that idea and launches an all out assault on the Earth and is forcibly taking humans and their souls. Thus begins the battle of Heaven versus Hell.

IGNPC: What about the campaign?

James Parker: The campaign tells the story from 3 sides, Heaven, Human and Hell. Each story arc advances the story with the last faction finishing it off. Right now we have about 60 hours of designed gameplay.

IGNPC: Will players will be able to see action from both sides of the war?

James Parker: Oh definitely. I mean, who wants to only play as the good guys?

IGNPC: What are the basic design differences of the factions of Heaven and hell?

James Parker: The basic design differences of Heaven versus Hell are that Heaven is the fast building, weak on the defense side that does a lot of hit and run till the end game and then brings the "thunder". Hell on the other side is slow to medium to build, but packs a punch like a mule kick from the start. Their units are truly the slow moving tanks of Armageddon.

IGNPC: It seems there would be lot of interesting combatants in a celestial civil war. What can you tell us about units in the game?

James Parker: We actually have more than two sides, but hey, there is only so much I can talk about at once. As far as the struggle between them, they are really two different styles of play to discuss amongst them.

IGNPC: Lots of RTS games make use of god powers, you guys seem to be able to be a little godlier what kinds of powers will you guys be able to bring into the fight.

James Parker: Powers? Truthfully, there are truly a lot of kick ass godly powers on all sides of the fence. Certain units are able to cast Pillar. Pillar is a cool effect that actually renders units immobile and if enough damage is done to them while under that effect they burst into dust. There is of course oldie-but-goodies such as Call of the Locusts. One of the things we wanted to do was have certain units wield these powers, but with a different style and flair than other games. It's kind of hard to describe terrain rising up, parting, filling with blood and starting to boil all in real-time...oh wait. I just did.

IGNPC: The screens look impressive. What is the technology like and what effects can we expect to see?

James Parker: EDEN is the code name for the Heaven versus Hell graphics engine. Every aspect of its design has been focused on next generation machines, and extra care has been taken to allow for a quick and easy port to next gen consoles, such as the Xbox 360, and the PS3.

We've put a lot of attention up to this point in a solid foundation for the toolset and backend engine core, which, we are really expecting to use again in upcoming projects as well. The artist pipeline is built to be completely hot-reload able; that is, we allow the artists, designers (and the potential mod community) to make changes to in game data, and simply alt-tab back to the game to see the changes.

As for Heaven versus Hell, the entire RTS is shader driven, which basically means that the potential for effects are endless. Currently, the entire game is lit with Spherical harmonics which, with shaders, will support our next steps to become the first RTS with fully deformable terrain. We've got a very adaptive and flexible post processing system, which is moving into support for full HDR rendering, and of course, comes with all the bells and whistles associated with it. (Such as specular bloom, and a 'hell signature' heat shimmer). The entire game is fully normal mapped, (parallax mapping to be exact, which is the same effects inside the unreal 3 engine).

One big effect that we've been paying close attention too, and will gather more and more 'wow' effect as it matures, is a new concept we call 'living terrain.' We really want to immerse the player into fully dynamic worlds, and to do that, we have to show how the units, structures, and effects of game play change the world that it's interacting with. For instance, Heaven buildings will cause grass to grow around them, trees and flowers to sprout up, and butterflies to emerge. When you place multiple, high cost buildings together, we want a real life rainforest to sprout up between them.